


cadant in obscurum

by dustofwarfare



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Interlude, M/M, end of game fic, made up imperial dramas that ardyn hated, why do i love doomed ships where two characters kill each other so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 01:51:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14094429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: “Follow me into my city of ruin, lightbringer,” Ardyn murmurs, with one last kiss. “And we shall see what rises when it is over.”An interlude between the moment when Noctis and Co. confront Ardyn in the throne room, and the final battle in the streets of Insomnia. Ardyn will let Noctis's friends go, but only if the Chosen King graces his table for one last meal. Or, as it happens, a glass of wine.





	cadant in obscurum

**Author's Note:**

> Title means "fall into darkness" and is taken from a refrain in the _Offertorium_ of Faure's Requiem. 
> 
> Hi, I'm obsessed with these two. OBSESSED. 
> 
> (This is a canon-compliant fic, so, you know. All that entails.)

 

 _cadant in obscurum_ (fall into darkness)

The Citadel is a pile of rubble broken by darkness, and the greatest of all demons reposes on the throne.

“What is _that_?” Prompto asks, every emotion threaded like a tapestry in the low timbre of his voice. Even en years of eternal night and despair hasn’t tempered his tendency to let everything he feels show in his voice.

Noctis is glad of that. Prompto is the most unchanging of them all; he is Noctis’s hope that the future for which he has come to die will be one worth living.

From the ceiling, chains wound around familiar figures, faces caught somewhere between agony and a rictus grin. Noct gives them but a spare glance; he is used to Ardyn’s tricks and illusions, and he’s spent ten years held captive to grim versions of a terrible future while trapped in the crystal, a cinematic horrorscape of what will happen to the world if he fails.

The Astrals had little care or concern for his sensibilities. Noctis has seen everyone he loves torn to slow, agonizing pieces in front of him. _This is what is at stake. This is what you risk. This is the world if the night never ends. This the fate that awaits._

Noctis believes in nothing but the three men who stand behind him, whose loyalty and love shine as bright as any forgotten light.

In front of him, the Starscourge smiles from a cursed throne. Hell gleams in his eyes.

“This is my ascension,” Noctis intones, like a bell, though the words feel just as hollow even if he means them. It is not for the Astrals and their battle plans that he is here; it is for the people who are yet left to greet the sunrise only he can bring.

Noctis’s resolve is the burn of his magic, the pulse of his blood, the weight of the ring on his hand.

It is the sight of his stalwart companions and greatest friends lying prone on the ground, taken down by a sudden flare of dark magic.

It is the _rage_ at the imposter who dared put his boot on Noctis’s throne.

The time has come to end this. 

***

“Come with me,” Ardyn says, gesturing, as imperious as any king even if he never bore the title. “There is no need to be barbaric about this. A fight to death we shall have, my young princeling. First, allow me to welcome you to my table as benefits my _noble_ rank.” Ardyn bows, mocking as ever.

Noctis is trembling, fingers tingling with the desire to pull his blade from the armiger and drive it deep into the Accursed’s black heart. This is no state visit. This is war.

“Noct,” Ardyn says, moving over the rubble with accustomed ease. “There is naught to be done to change what must be, but perhaps we can behave as kings and sup together in brotherhood. After all, I am your flesh and blood.”

“You are no king, and what runs in your veins is not blood,” Noctis says. “I have no desire to prolong this, Ardyn. You’ve been waiting. Let it begin.” His sword appears in a flash of starlit-blue, ready to do what must be done.

Ardyn chuckles; the sound wraps around Noctis like ice, like the illusory chains binding those whose loyalty to the King of Kings cost them everything. “Oh, I’ve been waiting _thousands_ of years. Surely an hour or two won’t matter, hmm? What is time to an immortal but a blink of an eye?”

“Your time as an immortal is close to an end,” Noctis says. “So it might be shorter than you think.”

Ardyn smiles, all pleasantries, the mask of his _man of no consequence_ somehow as grotesque as the bodies he’s strung up like trophies around his usurped throne. “And no one yearns for that more than I, dear Noct. Shall you spurn my attempts at hospitality?”

Noctis intends to answer with the fire spell churning in that strange ether that houses his magic; before he can do so, Ardyn speaks again.

“My price for the life of your friends,” Ardyn says. “A sojourn to the dining room, my would-be kingslayer. That is all I ask. And your friends shall walk unencumbered from this room, all the better to witness your failure when the dawn fails to rise.”

“I am no kingslayer,” Noctis says. “Because you are no king.”

Ardyn clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “Noct, Noct, Noct. Caught up as always by such _mere_ trivialities. I’m frankly _amazed_ that your time in the crystal measured only ten short years.” He studies his nails and sighs. “I was anticipating several decades at _least._ ”

He spreads his arms to his sides, his affable mask slipping aside to show the thing he truly is, hewn of cruelty and a grudge that spans millennia. “I have a kingdom, Noctis. It spreads from beyond these walls to the ends of Eos, and my throne is no mere chair padded in velvet, but rests upon the very sun itself. Now.” He flicks his hand. “Shall we begin our fated encounter with you watching your dearest companions torn apart by demons, or shall we have a drink like civilized men? Your choice, Noctis.”

“And I’m to believe you,” Noctis says, flatly. “That you will let them go?”

“I have shown you illusions, I have withheld the truth, I have _done what must be done --_ ” Here, Ardyn’s face changes; the demons that knit him together are unraveling the threads of his humanity, itself just another of his many coats. The inky black ichor that runs in his veins pulse in his ashen face, the glow of his eyes endless and bright like coals. “But oh, my prince, trust me when I tell you that I _keep my promises_. Dark though they may certainly be, I shall see them through to the end. My word that I shall not harm your friends. My quarrel is with your blood, not theirs.”

And Noctis, for some reason he can’t quite explain, believes him.

The Ultima Blade vanishes, a cold weight settling back into his armiger. He inclines his head. He is not hungry, but for his friends’ sake he will sit at this demon’s table, he will enact a mockery of court protocol. Better this be his last meal than the perfect, quiet supper shared with his friends at the campsite be _theirs._  

“As you wish,” Noctis says, inclining his head.

Ardyn removes his hat and bows with theatrical grace. “Right this way, your majesty. If you will.”

Ardyn makes _your majesty_ sound like a curse. At the moment, Noctis does not think it could be anything else.

***

The dining room is not destroyed but it is dusty, a faint musty smell permeating the velvet drapes and the wilting linens. It is set for some meal never served; likely meant for whatever ceremony was to follow the signing of the peace treaty.

At least this farce is not to be held in the family’s private dining room; Noct would prefer those last memories of his home be rooted in a past filled with light and laughter, not choked beneath the oppressive weight of Ardyn’s shadow-borne madness.  

The only thing Ardyn serves him for their “dinner” is wine in a cut-crystal chalice; there’s enough light that the liquid gleams scarlet.

“This is a little much, even for you,” Noctis says, picking up the glass. “Blood red wine? Kind of on the nose, isn’t it?”

Ardyn grins widely and toasts with his own glass, sipping it. “It’s a very good vintage, Noct. Only the best for my _esteemed_ guest.”  

“Do you really expect me to drink this?” Noctis fixes him with a sharp glare. Nothing in his promise to participate in this farcical last supper stipulated he actually _consume_ anything placed before him.

“It’s just wine, Noctis,” Ardyn says, and he sounds so totally human in that moment; a bit exasperated, amused, and if it weren’t for the malice caught like a dying insect in the amber of his eyes, Noctis would think he sounded almost _fond._ “If I wanted you untried and impaired, I could have begun the final act of our tragic play far before now.”

“You’re a regular Lord Avon,” Noctis murmurs. He takes a miniscule sip of the wine; it seems his court protocol training has not waned, even after everything. Ignis would be proud, except that he’d be furious that Noctis was drinking wine from the devil’s cup.

“Lord Avon, _please_ . What a hack,” Ardyn says, leaning back in his chair. He waves a hand, looking bored. “In my day the theatre was so much less formulaic. There are so many delightful plays and epics lost to the ravages of time.” For all Ardyn is a masquerade of humanity, he seems to be sincere in this. “I was simply _appalled_ at the Emperor’s choices for entertainment. Neo-classical morality tales extolling the virtues of fealty, so _trite_ and _obvious_ . It was as if I suffered thrice my long years each performance. And attendance was _mandatory_ , that insufferable oaf. Had I not needed him alive until a very specific moment, I would have consumed his soul the first time he made me sit through _The Oath of the Graleans._ ”

Noctis is momentarily struck by the thought that the -- thing -- at the table with him has lived on Eos for _two thousand years,_ enough to form strident opinions on theatrical performances and amass a peculiar yet distinctive personal style that seems to involve mixing as many patterns together as possible.

Noctis rises and walks to where Adryn is sprawled in a chair at the head of the table, likely where he thinks the king would sit. He’s wrong -- at important state dinners, King Regis sat in the very dead center with his back to the wall and his Shield at his side, his Crownsguard standing sentinel-silent behind him.

Ardyn tilts his chin up and smiles, pleasant and empty, as Noctis stands before him. “More wine, my honored guest? I’m afraid there’s little else on the menu.”

“What are you?” Noctis asks.

Ardyn chuckles. He leans back in the chair and slams his booted feet on the table, breaking the precious porcelain of the place setting without flinching. “Ardyn Lucis Caelum. The Accursed. The Starscourge. Do you require additional reading material? The library is at your disposal, if so. It’s...that way, I believe,” he says, pointing, and it’s the wrong way, but Noctis doesn’t correct him.

_Everything is at my disposal. This is my kingdom, this is my castle, this is my legacy, those are my plates and that was definitely my wine._

“What are you?” Noctis asks, again.

Ardyn gives a delighted little clap of his hands. “This is no story wherein if you know my true name, all you have to do is speak it and I turn into dust. Besides, I told you true -- I am Ardyn Lucis Caelum, The Betrayed, who took demons into himself to save his people and who was cast from grace like a broken, useless thing.” With this, he kicks the shards of porcelain china onto the ground with his boot.

“I’m not asking _who_ you are, Ardyn. I’m asking _what_ you are.” Noctis is ready to be done with this, the games and this playacting that’s obviously intended to undermine his confidence, smother the embers of his resolve before it flares into something stronger.

“I am not sure,” Ardyn says, and then -- there it is, the demon-thing that is and is not Ardyn, inhuman and somehow easier to look at when it’s not trying to cloak itself as a man. “We have long inhabited this host, so much that it is impossible to tell which of us is the man and which of us is the Scourge.”

His speaking voice retains that odd, bombastic intonation but there’s something else, too -- a discordant symphony of broken strings vibrating all at once, it raises the hair on the back of Noctis’s neck to hear something so unholy given voice.

“And who is stalling?” Noctis asks. “The daemons or the man? Who is afraid of the end, and who yearns for it?”

“Oh, my pathetic princeling. Some would-be bringer of light you are, asking such pointless questions. It does not _matter_ who yearns and who fears -- all that matters is _that it ends._ ”

“Then let’s end it.” Noctis hurls his crystal goblet at the wall and watches it break, the dark claret wine making an impressive mess as it splashes over the Lucis Caelum family crest hanging on the wall behind Ardyn’s head.

Ardyn turns, sees, and then throws his head back and laughs. “Make no mistake, Noctis. Our bloodline will end here tonight, but how _refreshing_ to know you really are a part of it. That was quite the theatrical gesture of pique. Well _done_.”  With a gleeful grin, Ardyn tosses his own glass behind him so that it, too, breaks against the wall.  “Break whatever you like, my prince. This city is nothing but broken dreams and shattered lives; what’s a few more dishes amidst the rubble?”

“Stop _talking_ ,” Noctis says, sounding for a moment like the twenty-year-old he was the last time he was in this room, this Citadel, this city. “You’re so eager to end things, let’s end them.”

Ardyn rises, and reaches out to take Noctis’s chin in his fingers. “Do not fail me when the time comes, Chosen King. Or this world will suffer horrors of which you cannot even _imagine_ .” 

Noctis stares at him, looks beyond the daemons and the madness and sees the man trapped in those amber eyes, desperate to hold on to some sense of himself until the last, because what else does he have left?

“Starscourge, Accursed, and brother,” Noctis says, not flinching from the touch, even though the feel of Ardyn’s bare fingers on his skin makes it crawl and his stomach twists in revulsion. “I will not fail to strike true.”

He thinks of the gruesome sight of bodies twisted above the throne, the sight of Luna dying in Altissa, white gown drenched in water and blood, eyes as empty as the sea.

His vengeance was not two thousand years in the making, but Noctis will have it regardless. He never was very good at patience.

Ardyn leans in and kisses him. His mouth tastes bitter like the wine and sweet like something rotten; it makes Noctis want to gag, especially when Ardyn’s tongue slips into his mouth. His hand slides up from Noctis’s chin to the back of his neck, into his hair, and he holds Noctis close.

Then Ardyn bites him on the lip -- hard enough that the copper-tang of blood mixes with the sweet-flower rot taste and remnants of the heady wine.

“One taste before I end it,” Ardyn murmurs, licking at the blood he’s drawn. “Ah, Noct. In some dark world, how we could have _ruled,_ you and I _._ ”

Noctis allows the kiss for a few more moments, then pushes Ardny back with a gentle shove.

Ardyn’s face is flushed, his eyes glittering -- he smiles, wistful and cruel. “And in that self-same world, how I could have made you _writhe_.”

They stand there, face to face in a dusty room amidst the shattered Citadel of a ruined city and a broken kingdom.  Enemies, brother, light and dark, hope and despair, everything that was and is and could have been. “And in another world, Ardyn, you and I might have been brothers. Maybe we still will be.”

There is no mask on Ardyn’s face to hide his rage, and Noct knows the time for pleasantries, poisoned-tipped though they may be, is over.

“Follow me into my city of ruin, lightbringer,” Ardyn murmurs, with one last kiss. “And we shall see what rises when it is over.”

***

The dawn rises. 

House Caelum does not. 

 


End file.
